In broadband networks where a wide variety of applications (e.g., games, news, communications, and commerce) execute on consumer devices, there is often a need to acquire resources personalized for the user that are not resident on the device. Such devices and networks include set-top boxes and digital TVs connected to cable, satellite, telephone, fiber, and Internet Protocol-based broadcast networks; cell phones and PDAs connected over a mobile phone network; and personal computers connected over the Internet. Personalized resources may include information used in customized Internet or Interactive TV (“iTV”) portals like weather forecasts, stock quotes, and news related to favorite sports, teams, and players; recommendations of items of interest (e.g., movies, music, products, and services); targeted advertisements; and advice tailored to a user based on his or her technical capacity and past history as may be utilized in advanced computer help systems.
There is a need for a system and method that provides personalized resources to a user of a consumer device which may provide one or more of the following: (a) find resources that best fit the consumer or user, (b) protect user privacy, (c) identify resources despite there being a large number of potential resources, (d) function on devices having limited computational and storage capacities, (e) preserve bandwidth on broadband networks where it is limited and/or asymmetrical (i.e., up-channel capacity different from down-channel), (f) support user models or profiles consisting of a large number of attributes, and (g) accommodate a variety of rules applicable to determining what resources are provided (e.g., user profiles, application context information, and business rules).